privatisation

CorinDann ….could we see the likes of a company that runs a private prison, Serco, which in the UK is looking at child services, involved in an area like that?

Anne Tolley If they can deliver good results for people, why not? I mean, I’m very involved in the development of the Wiri contract. That’s a service-based contract. It’s not just running a facility; that’s delivering 10% better than the public service in rehabilitation. That’s going to make an enormous difference to the families of those prisoners. So if private enterprise can deliver those sorts of results, I wouldn’t hesitate to use them. But there will still be in communities the desire and the people who want to be involved at the NGO level, many in the volunteer sector, because we’re good people, and they want to contribute.

This guest blog post is by Peter Matthewson. Peter is a lecturer in the Department of Social Practice at Unitec. He has previously worked as a social worker in the former Department of Social Welfare, in the Probation Service, and in mental health.

The ‘Expert Panel’ tasked, in obscure corporate-speak, with producing ‘a programme level business case’ for modernising Child Youth and Family is clearly driven by a political agenda, and a predetermined message is likely to be delivered to Anne Tolley. Further, the terms of reference presented to the ‘Expert Panel’ suggest a thinly disguised attack on our profession.